


Running Home

by houdini74



Series: Clint and Marcy [11]
Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: M/M, New house, Newly married, Parent-Child Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:46:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23734828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/houdini74/pseuds/houdini74
Summary: David and Patrick take Clint and Marcy to see the new house.
Relationships: Clint Brewer/Marcy Brewer, Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Series: Clint and Marcy [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1377373
Comments: 65
Kudos: 346





	Running Home

**Author's Note:**

> The wedding needed more Clint and Marcy, so here's some to fill the gap.

David can’t sit still. Marcy can see him in the front seat, his hands and knees bouncing to a rhythm that she can’t hear. With a soft smile, she watches her son reach a hand from the steering wheel to rest on David’s leg and his husband’s nervous energy dissipates at the touch. 

“We’re almost there.” David’s tone makes it sound like they’ve been driving for hours when they’ve been in the car for maybe fifteen minutes. And five of that was spent in the car outside of Rose Apothecary while David ‘just ran in for a second’ to make sure Stevie was handling things okay. 

She and Clint will drive home tomorrow, and Patrick had assured them that spending the afternoon after their wedding together isn’t an imposition. She isn’t entirely sure she believes him, but she gets so few opportunities to see him and David that she takes him at his word. Besides, she’s eager to see the place where David and Patrick will spend the next chapter of their lives.

Patrick pulls into a tree-lined driveway and brings the car to a stop in front of a stone cottage. It’s better suited to the English countryside than rural Ontario and she can see why David fell in love with it. “Oh. David. Patrick. It’s lovely.”

When she and Clint visited Patrick last year, they’d seen the store and his apartment and all the other corners of this tiny town, but she still struggles to picture Patrick living anywhere other than the town where he’d grown up. When he’d told her about the house, his voice breaking over the phone a week before the wedding, her imagination had helpfully pictured a house a couple of streets over from their own. And no matter how sternly she reminds herself that things are different now, it has never seemed fully real. Until now.

She gives the flower beds a careful look as Patrick fumbles with his keys at the front door. The ferns and hostas accent the house and they’ll be easy to look after. The house is empty. Now that the wedding is over, David and Patrick will spend the next few weeks moving out of Patrick’s apartment before his lease expires at the end of the month.

She blinks back a couple of tears. The lack of sleep is making her overly emotional. Last night’s reception had still been in full swing when she and Clint had finally made it back to the motel around one o’clock. They slept fitfully in the strange bed until nine, waking frequently as other guests came and went from the motel. She can feel the tiredness lingering behind her eyes, but it’s accompanied by a happiness that’s almost foreign in its completeness. As though he can sense her thoughts, Clint wraps an arm around her shoulders and kisses her temple, squeezing her gently. 

She can’t spend another day in tears. She’d cried through the ceremony yesterday, her composure first crumbled at the cracking of Moira’s voice and was completely shattered by her son’s first words to his new husband. Like Patrick, she can’t believe this is happening. Has happened. She can’t believe her son is married. That’s he’s married to someone who makes him light up the way David does. 

Ahead of her, Patrick unlocks the door, holding it open as he gestures them inside. The front door opens into a small entryway that leads to an open concept living room and kitchen. The hardwood floors are warm and lightly scarred from generations of feet. To their right, a set of stairs leads to the second floor. David urges them into the living room, ushering them from room to room, his words tripping over themselves to tell them about the placement of the furniture and the color they will paint the bedroom and the plans to convert the adjacent room into a walk-in closet. 

Upstairs, David opens the door to the third bedroom. “We’ll use this as an office and guest bedroom. So you’ll have somewhere to stay when you come to visit.” David offers the last words almost shyly, as if he’s still not confident that they’ll want to visit. As though wild horses will keep her away once an invitation is extended.

“That sounds wonderful.” She squeezes David’s arm and gets a smile in return. This tour of their future home raises something that’s niggled at the back of her mind. She lets the thought come to full bloom, putting out a hand to hold Patrick back as Clint and David head back down the stairs.

“This is probably none of my business…” Patrick gives her a look of caution mixed with amusement. She shouldn’t ask, it’s between David and Patrick and nothing to do with her, not really. It’s curiosity, pure and simple and she wishes she could take the words back.

“You’re not just going to stop there, are you?” There’s a looseness to Patrick that has never been there before. They’ve both tried to be careful over the past year and for the first time she thinks maybe they can get beyond careful to something easier, more natural. But first, she has to get beyond this conversation that she’s started.

“Yes. No. I shouldn’t. Dammit.” She and Patrick have come so far, she doesn’t want to jeopardize the way they’ve rebuilt their relationship. She shakes her head. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

Patrick laughs at her and leans casually beside the window. “Just say it, I won’t get mad, I promise.”

“Have you…?” She waves at the empty room, thinking of David’s plans to fill the space. “Kids?” The word echoes against the empty walls, bouncing back to her. If Patrick takes this badly, this will be what she remembers, the strike of her intemperate words against the bare floorboards.

Patrick regards her carefully and silently for a moment. “David doesn’t want kids. If wanting kids was a scale of 1-10, David would be at a negative 200.”

“And what about you?” She remembers talking to Rachel about kids and she’d assumed, they’d both assumed, that Patrick wanted the same thing. Of course, the things she’d assumed about Patrick would fill a library with books left over. Still, she hopes he’s not giving up something now that he might want later. “I thought you wanted them. Before.” She’s making this conversation even more awkward than it already is. She should drop it and go look at the kitchen and get lost in David’s plans to retile the backsplash. But a desire to understand Patrick better pushes her forward despite her reservations.

Patrick doesn’t flinch from her gaze and his eyes are warmer than she expects. “I’m…” He breaks off, searching for the right word. “...ambivalent. If I thought kids were in my future, I’d be fine with that. But they’re not and I’m fine with that too.” Downstairs, they can hear David calling Patrick’s name. Before she can leave, Patrick turns to her, his face serious. “It’s no choice, you know. Between David and whatever. I’d give up a lot more to keep what we have.” He nods to the door. “We should go before David comes looking for us.”

She follows Patrick down the stairs, mulling over what he’s said. All the years that Patrick and Rachel had been together, she’d expected that grandkids would be the next logical step. Her sisters had teased her constantly whenever the subject came up, declaring that ‘she didn’t have anything to worry about.’ If she’s honest, there’s a tiny pinch of a loss as she lets go of something she never really had. But it’s not like Patrick’s cousins don’t have a battalion of children that she can dote on to her heart’s content. 

“I wouldn’t be surprised if you see deer and raccoons out here.” Clint gestures at the spacious backyard as Patrick precedes her into the kitchen. David looks both horrified and intrigued by the idea of seeing wildlife in the backyard. 

Patrick leans against the counter next to David, his husband’s hand finds his shoulder automatically, even as his free hand waves through the air. “Did you get lost?”

“Nope.” David narrows his eyes at Patrick but whatever he sees in his husband’s face keeps him from pursuing it. 

“Come see the backyard. Patrick wants a vegetable garden.” David’s face twists, presumably at the thought of digging in the dirt. 

As she follows Patrick outside, Clint squeezes her arm. “Everything okay?”

“Yes, it really is.” She’ll tell Clint about her conversation with Patrick later, when they’re alone, but she knows that all Clint wants is to be sure that their son is happy. 

Outside, she and David stand on the back deck as Patrick and Clint discuss the best placement for a future vegetable garden. Clint had planted their first vegetable garden five years ago and he’s been obsessed with growing the perfect tomato ever since. She hopes that Patrick does put in a garden, then he and Clint can share their frustrations about tomatoes and compost and hail damage and leave her out of it. Beside her, David leans against the railing, his gaze following hers as they watch their husbands pace out a space in the center of the lawn.

She clears her throat. “David. I— Thank you.” 

“For what?” He looks down at her, genuinely confused.

“There was a time I thought Patrick might never be happy. But I look at him and—” She breaks off, unable to articulate everything she’s feeling. “I know the two of you will be very happy here.” 

David rolls his eyes and she knows she’s embarrassed him. “I think we will be.” David turns back to watch Clint and Patrick. Clint is gesturing, his hands level to the ground and Marcy knows he’s talking about his tomato plants. “It’s going to be hard with my family gone.”

David’s voice is wistful and she can only imagine how difficult it must have been for him to watch his parents and sister leave earlier that day. She places a hand on his arm. “You know you can call me anytime. You don’t need a reason.”

David smiles at that, blinking rapidly to fight off the tears. “It’s going to be different to have all this space for just the two of us. I’m used to having so many people around.” She rubs his shoulder, letting him finish. “Of course, I won’t have to worry about Alexis stealing my face masks or my parents bursting in at all hours, so it’s not all bad.” David pauses, lost in thought. “If we get lonely, maybe we can get a dog.”


End file.
